Sidewalks of New York

Writer-director-actor Edward Burns successfully returns to the lighter side of human entanglements after roles in Saving Private Ryan and 15 Minutes with this romantic comedy in which a handheld camera establishes a compelling sense of intimacy, immediacy and movement. The film blends scenes in which an unseen interviewer asks intimate questions of a half-dozen characters with scenes from their lives. We meet a producer for TV’s Entertainment This Week (Burns), a seasoned seducer of women (Dennis Farina), an Italian-Puerto Rican schoolteacher (Rosario Dawson), a doorman-songwriter (David Krumholtz), a waitress-student (Brittany Murphy), and a dentist (Stanley Tucci) who is married to a realtor (Heather Graham). The circular story’s noose begins to tighten as couples connect and disconnect, and suspicions of infidelity escalate.